CDR Tests

The Ricoh MP7125A is the second drive which supports 12x writing among with the "JustLink" anti-coaster technology. We used the CD Speed 99 build-in writing speed test and confimed the 12x writing speed (12.02x average):

- Procedure:
We tested the Ricoh MP7125A with Nero v5.0.4.4, CloneCD v2.8.4.3, Padus DJ v3.00.762 software and with the following media: Princo 74min (16x) & 80min (16x), Platinum 80min (12x), Verbatim 74min (16x) & 80min (16x), Mitsui 74min (16x), Prodisc 80min (16x) (red bottom) and with Ricoh/Plextor/Verbatim 74min HS RW. We didn't saw any problems with the various media which had been faced with MP9120A. Another welcomed improvement.

- CD-R Tests:
We created "DataCD" job with data slight higher than 74mins (74:03:65). We burned the same job with all 4 CDR-W drives:

As you can see, there are differences between the 4 tested drives. The old Ricoh MP7120A still holds the smaller writing time and the new Ricoh MP7125A is about 5 secs slower. The Ricoh MP9120A is again faster while the PX-W1210A is out of the race (with 416secs). The CPU Usage is very good and certainly lower than the rest of the drives.

- 80min CDs:
As with the previous test, we created a DataCD (80:02:16) and used the same media for all burns:

The Ricoh MP7125A and Ricoh MP9120A drives gave the lower burning time in this test. The later one is 1 sec ahead while the other drives (Ricoh MP7120A & Plextor PX-W1210A) are following with 2 and 6 secs behind.

- Overburning Tests:
We used 90 and 99min CDs (from Medea International and Copy4All) and using Nero we were able to write up to 89minutes. The Ricoh MP7125A however doesn't seem to like 99min CDs at all since all overburning tests with CD Speed 99 and Feurio failed (even if we tried max time 89mins). The 90min media could be written entirely.

- AudioCD Tests:
We created several Audio CDs (including CD-Text). All of the CDs we created were tested with the Plextor PX-40TS and Plextor's CD-Text compatible CD player. From what we saw, everything worked just fine.

- CloneCD Tests:
The Ricoh MP7125A as all previous Ricoh models supports both DAO and SAO-RAW writing modes according to the CloneCD v2.8.4.3. Our tests results confirmed that the drive can work with DAO/SAO RAW.

Something noticeable is that the CloneCD doesn't regognize that the drive supports "JustLink". However when we made the buffer underrun tests (with CloneCD) the drive kept working after a buffer underrun, which means that "JustLink" supports is working fine in real life... (CloneCD author will have to fully support the drive's JustLink feature in a future release).

SD2 report:
For the SD2 tests we used the "No One Lives For Ever" CD title. We used Ricoh MP7125A both as reader/writer. The results were suprisingly very good. The produced backup worked in:

The above tests showed that since the backup worked in the Pioneer DVD-U05S there is a good chance that it will work in some other drives also..Again the Ricoh MP7125A cannot produce a 100% working SafeDisc 2 backup as most of the current selling recorders in the market today.

- Buffer Underrun tests:
The Ricoh MP7125A supports "JustLink" anti-coaster technology. From our tests "JustLink" worked very good even when you will make your computer working at full CPU/HD load. The gap lenght of the JustLink technology is under 2micro meters, which in terms of absolute numbers is lower than the BURN-Proof technology.

Verdict of CDR Results:
The Ricoh MP7125A worked very good in our writing tests. If you have read our Ricoh MP9120A review you certainly have noticed the various problems we had with certain CDR media. The Ricoh MP7125A doesn't have those problems and burned without any complaints all the inserted media. The recording times are slightly higher than the internal competition from the old MP7120A and MP9120A but are faster than the PX-W1210A. The drive supports overburning up to 89minutes and showed a strange behavior with 99minutes CDs. The JustLink technology is there and works very well against buffer underrun problems. Finally, the CloneCD users will find the adoption of DAO-RAW writing feature very useful for the backup of their CDs. :)